THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART, ATHENS, WILL INHABIT THE FIX.
THE BUILDING AND ITS RECONSTRUCTION, STEP BY STEP. AND STORIES AND INSPIRATIONS.

Thursday, August 13, 2009

5 scenarios for 'Ecoaesthetic Comm(un)ercial' by the Guerrilla Optimists

Dear viewer, based on our marketing research and your concerns, we have concocted 5 scenarios-in-progress for the shooting of the ‘eco-aesthetic comm(un)ercial’

We ask for your feedback in choosing and shaping the scenario we will shoot and edit August 27th - September 2nd. Please choose from the scenarios below, the one you think would be most effective in communicating our environmental crisis and the collective and individual responsibility for change. You may make alterations to the scenario of your choice that we will try to incorporate in the final script. We hope that the final result will reflect a communal aesthetic and not be the vision of any one person. We ask for your feed back by August 19th.

You are invited to take part directly in the final revision process on august 21st Please contact guerrillaoptimists@gmail.com for more information

Camera circles around a table to reveal a family (MOTHER, FATHER, LITTLE BOY, TEENAGE GIRL). They are finishing a meager breakfast of a small piece of fruit and biscuits. The mother and father get up in a rush to prepare for their day. The boy finishes eating. The girl holds a knife and watches her brother’s plate.

CU: brother’s plate has an apple core and some crumbs of biscuit

In a shot of a mirror on the wall, We see the faces of boy and girl still seated at the table, as the parents self-absorbedly bustle about in the background. The boy looks into the mirror, but the girl is intent with something she’s doing at the breakfast table with the knife.

CUT TO:The children are at the front door about to go out. They each put on a mask, some protective eyewear and some ear-protectors and gloves. Kids complain about wearing all this stuff. Parents look at them sadly.

MEDIUM WIDE (from behind the child): The little boy opens the door to outside and the quiet is shattered by the tremendous roar of traffic and construction sounds.

Outside shot of enourmous dirty, grey, oppressive building dwarfing it’s tiny entrance.We see the kids standing in the doorway. Then we see the sidewalk in front of them besieged by a sea of roaring vehicles shimmering in the heat.

MEDIUM WIDE: (from behind the children) A car slows, in a flurry of garbled voices and self-absorbed laughter, to hurl cigarrette ends and trash towards an overburdened bin. It narrowly misses the kids.CU on a SAD CHILD’s face and hand pressed against the glass of the back window inside the car. The child’s mouth moves to say sorry.CU: the boy raises his gloved hand in a silent waveWIDE: car speeds loudly away in a plume of black fumes.CU: of the girl’s hand placed awkwardly in her glove, she raises her hand protectively to her chest

To the other side of the children a door is flung open causing them to jump out of the way as boxes and slopping liquids in buckets are dragged toward the rubbish pile. We don’t see who has taken the rubbish out but hear a woman’s voice say sorry children in a friendly but careless way.CU: on gunk from the buckets being dumped unceremoniously in the roadside drain and half-eatensea-produce piled up by the bins.MEDIUM CU: profile of boy’s face. The boy stares at the disgusting garbage blankly. Behind him, the girl looks determined.

CUT TO:WIDE: Walking off the main street to bounce a ball listlessly on a scrap of waste ground, the children pass a sign announces that a new mall will be developed instead of the park promised and “sorry’ for the inconvenience

As the boy goes off to play with others and their mound of plastic toys, the girl nods at their invitation but disappears behind yet another mound of garbage. It looks almost as if she has disappeared into the mound.

CU shot of her face emerging on the other side of the garbage. She takes off her mask, protective eyewear, ear-protectors. She removes one glove to reveal a hand clenched, holding something, and bends to the ground.CU (POV of the ground looking up at girl) Girl reaches gently down (towards the camera) opening her fist palm up, with seeds in her hands. We see the breakfast apple seeds. Her face is thoughtful.

Zoom-out reveals a substantial garden in vast area of grey.The beautiful garden fills the entire screen

Split screen shows a continuous city view of uniform grey appartment blocks with the balcony doors shut.The left hand screen remains undisturbed, grey and grim, but, (at the same time) on the right-hand side the whole block opens at once and a person emerges from each door, each carrying one big plant. They leave it on their balconies, go back inside, and close the doors again.

The immediate visual effect is that the left-hand side of the screen is dramatically lacking in colour while on the right-hand side the city is suddenly transformed into a beautiful lush garden bathed in green.

The ‘family-dinner-table’ is the archetypal setting for a consciousness-raising development and change of behavior. Using this motif we hope to establish the fact that Greece’s example is just a smaller version of what is happening to the World’s resources.

¾ MEDIUM WIDE SHOT OF MOTHER, FATHER, GIRL, YOUNGER BROTHER, OLDER BROTHER sit around a dinner table. In the first shot they wear costumes that exemplify their social roles.It is paramount that this is manufactured in a precise way in accordance with Greek family life in order to firmly establish this in it’s brief (10 seconds) appearance as a motif for the family being the basis of a society. For this reason we initially adopt the recognized (safe)language of TV with the intention of dismantling it in an alarming fashion.

CUGIRL:Dad, What will happen to us in the future?

CUDAD:Every generation has to deal with it’s own problems my love

MEDIUM CLOSE shot zooms out over the rest of this shot to reveal increasingly strange things.-costumes begin to over-exagerate their social functions.

GIRL:“What do you mean?”-mother arrives with a tray of garbage and starts placing it on everyone’s plate.

DAD:“Well people tend to think about what’s good for themselves in the short-term-”Dad takes a big piece of garbage for himself

-costumes change again, characters have become stranger, clown-like- with funny noses and hats, other figures are sitting passively in the background, blurry. Its unclear who they are or why they are there.

GIRL:If you really love me so much why don’t you stop them ruining my future?

CAMERA FREEZECamera swings from a theater view to an overhead view- as if from space- to directly above the table-top(paint tabletop green and ‘blue-screen’ rising seawaters)-sound of lapping waves accompanies gradual covering of table and its food/plates which by now resemble small islands sinking beneath the water. (5seconds)-family hangs onto their little islands of food/garbage, the hands of the other figures also reach to those islands to grab on. While no struggle for those few objects above the water level occurs- it lurks in this moment.CU Hands are tense and straining. They hang on tightly to what they can.

CUT TO

¾ MEDIUM WIDE SHOT same angle as the first shotthe whole table again with the original family unit without funny costumes. The table is covered in a mixture of food, garbage, and gadgetry. Everyone is eating what they can find or setting off the electronic devices

The mother returns with a sculpture of food and garbage with a candle lit on top.

MUMHappy birthday my baby!

EVERYONE

Happy birthday!

GIRLStop it! Stop it! I don’t want anything else

Tight CUs of family members shot from below or with strange distorting angles. Everyone is outraged.

DADCome now, your mother’s prepared this for you special

GIRLBut where will we put it?

MEDIUM WIDE: dad pushes trash onto the floor around them to make space on the table, everyone except daughter looks very pleased about this.MEDIUM CLOSE: of floor where there are still puddles of water that gather around the trash

Frontal MEDIUM CU of girl – she speaks to the television audience directly

WIDE SHOT: PEOPLE busy sweeping in an open area covered in trash. At first it seems like they are cleaning together

CU from below (POV of trash...): individual people’s faces while they are busy sweeping

MEDIUM CLOSE SHOT: the broom pushes trash over a taped line (the red and white warning tape) on the sidewalk.

MEDIUM WIDE: reveals multiple lines on the ground. People are busy pushing trash over the lines away from themselves

WIDE SHOT: reveals that the lines on the ground form a grid of little squares. There is a person in each square- pushing trash into the squares of others.

An alarm goes off and lights flash. Everyone stops and turns eagerly toward the sound

WIDE SHOT: A car pulls up with stuff

MEDIUM WIDE: the car with lots of shiny new stuff in packaging, and the faces of people crowding round

various CU shots: shiny stuff and eager hands and money

WIDE: everyone rushing back to their squares, smiling and carrying shiny stuff in their arms

MEDIUM WIDE SHOTS: of different people unwrapping things

MEDIUM CLOSE: things being thrown on the ground – in the distance blurry other figures unwrap and throw stuff on the ground

WIDE SHOT: everyone pauses to contemplate the stuff on the ground all around them. Then all at the same time they jump for their brooms and begin shoving the stuff into their neighbor’s squares again

The whole sequence repeats using slightly different shots 2 more times. (edits of each shot are very short and rapid- they are rhythmic, like a dance sequence with music)

WIDE: mid-sequence of the 3rd repetition everything freezes and a PERSON enters the screen. He/she is dressed like a singer in the skiladiko

CU: He/she says/sings the following as a rhyme or a vaudeville song

(something like this- your help is needed to write it!)

PERSONOh do you know where the materials for that stuff you just bought comes from?What part of the world was mined and what chemicals were used?Did you think where it goes when its time has past?Is there room enough for trash? Is there sea enough? Is there land enough?Did you use it more than once?Did you really need it?

In a series of medium close shots of the humans where the background is revealed in fragments- little by little- the viewer becomes aware of the fact that the picnic is taking place in a rubbish disposal pit or ‘landfill’

A comment is passed in the conversation on the general quality of the surroundings.

The scene and costumes change to an absurd pseudo-opera of Wagnerian proportion.